Democratic senators have concerns that the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) could break the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) tech infrastructure.
In a new letter addressed to SSA commissioner Frank Bisignano, senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden say that DOGE’s plans to “hastily upgrade” SSA IT systems could disrupt the delivery of benefits or result in mass data losses. The warning comes after WIRED reported in March that DOGE officials were planning to rebuild SSA’s code base in a matter of months. The move, originally spearheaded by Steve Davis, one of Elon Musk’s key lieutenants and a leader at DOGE, could result in total system collapse, experts told WIRED at the time.
“Put simply, DOGE has already limited access to benefits by damaging SSA’s technological infrastructure—and this rushed IT modernization plan can only exacerbate those problems,” the senators wrote in their letter.
Since DOGE infiltrated SSA earlier this year, the agency’s website has crashed numerous times, making it difficult for beneficiaries to access their accounts. The outages could last a few minutes to nearly a day, the Washington Post reported in April. SSA officials have previously proposed plans to cut its workforce by 12 percent, or around 7,000 jobs. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal earlier this week, Bisignano described plans to revamp SSA into a “digital first” agency, relying heavily on artificial intelligence.
“DOGE staffers hacking away Social Security’s backend tech with no safeguards is a recipe for disaster, not a serious update of the agency’s digital infrastructure,” Warren tells WIRED. “This rush job risks people’s private data, creates security gaps, and could result in catastrophic cuts to all benefits. If this DOGE experiment fails, it’s the millions of Americans who rely on Social Security every month who will feel the pain.”
The senators called the “ultimate goal” to upgrade IT “a worthy one,” but called on officials to pursue it with the “appropriate testing and safeguards.” For years, SSA has tried to upgrade its data systems that are built on COBOL, a legacy coding language few engineers are trained to use. But these modernization plans are often expected to take years, not a few months like DOGE has planned.
In the letter, the senators ask Bisignano to detail DOGE’s role in upgrading SSA’s tech and any changes made to datasets and systems. They also ask for any information related to potential hacks or data leaks that may have occurred as a result of this modernization work. The senators asked Bisignano to respond by June 17.
“This is an environment that is held together with bail wire and duct tape,” a former senior SSA technologist working in the office of the chief information officer told WIRED in March. “The leaders need to understand that they’re dealing with a house of cards or Jenga. If they start pulling pieces out, which they’ve already stated they’re doing, things can break.”